Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
tributed material capabilities. The distribution of power creates opportunities and constraints
for states. It does not determine, by itself, the character of international order.
International order can be manifest in various ways. This chapter has focused on the three
major logics or mechanisms by which order is established and maintained: balance, com-
mand, and consent. These notions of order are rooted in both theory and history. Each offers a
specific set of assumptions and expectations about how relations among states are organized.
Each offers a general account of the rise and fall of international order over the centuries.
The aftermath of major wars have often provided “order moments” for the global system. At
these junctures, great powers have endeavored to establish rules and arrangements for stable
intestate relations. And in changing ways over the centuries, these three logics of order have
variously informed the principles and practice by which states have engaged in order build-
ing.
All three logics of order are relevant to understanding American-led postwar order. The
United States has been in the vanguard of liberal order building in the twentieth century. But
these efforts have unfolded alongside postwar settlements in which the great powers have ne-
gotiated and adapted principles of restraint and accommodation. The Westphalian state sys-
tem—and its evolved principles and practices—provides the foundation for efforts at build-
ing liberal international order. At the same time, the American-led order is deeply hierarchic-
al in character. The United States undertook postwar order building when its power overshad-
owed the other major states, within the West and beyond. In terms of the prevailing power
disparities, the postwar order was, in a sense, doomed to be hierarchical. But it was a hier-
archical order infused with liberal characteristics. The theoretical challenge is to understand
the changing ways in which balance, command, and consent have operated within and across
the political landscape of this expansive order.
This chapter has identified variations in types of hierarchical orders. Hierarchical orders
can be established and maintained by coercive domination or through consent. Hierarchies
can grow out of economic exchange that create specialization and core-periphery forms of
interdependence. They can be built simply on disparities of power capabilities or on more
elaborate forms of institutionalized rule—either imposed or negotiated. Out of these dimen-
sions, we can distinguish between imperial and liberal forms of hierarchy. Imperial-oriented
hierarchy exists when the dominant state imposes order and establishes its rule, in the fi-
nal instance, through coercion. Liberal-oriented hierarchy is international order in which the
dominant state builds and operates within more or less agreed-upon rules and institutions.
The dominant state provides public goods and opens itself up to reciprocal political processes
of consultation and negotiation. Along a continuum between these ideal types, hierarchical
orders can be arrayed.
Equipped with these concepts and distinctions, we are now in a position to look more
closely at the circumstances that lead powerful states to build hierarchy around imperial and
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